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Thanks to merryweather for the historical perspective on the flags of the Confederacy a thoroughly interesting read.

you're welcome.

the american civil war was arguably the first really modern war (along with the crimean) and very distinct from those that had preceded it by relatively few years (the napoleonic wars had ended only some 40-50 years earlier). people in the uk tend not to be very clued up on the conflict apart from it being 'a war against slavery'. knowledge is hazy: ask your average brit who commanded the union forces at gettysburg, for example, and many will not know and those that do give a reply will generally say ulysses s grant. (grant was capturing vicksburg at the time of gettysburg which was equally significant in giving the union control of the mississippi.) very few brits visiting the us visit civil war places/battlefields and even fewer are clued up on the reasons for the war. (arguably slavery wasn't the direct cause of the war but was the cause of secession which did cause the war! it's complicated!)

i can recall visiting pennsylvania for the first time in 1987. we had taken in new york, driven down to philadelphia, and then escaped into the tranquil lancaster county countryside (having seen the area depicted in the film witness just a couple of years before.) our next stop was harrisburg and we decided to head south for a day out to gettysburg, not really knowing what was there. i can recall that gettysburg has a roundabout; very rare in the us!

we arrived at the visitor centre on a really hot day - mercury was hitting 100 deg F - and had a look around in the museum. that was it we thought as obviously after a century the battlefield will be either built over, or farmed on, or left to disappear back into the landscape. i can recall walking out into the heat and seeing some brass cannon a couple of hundred yards away and suggesting to the boss that we stroll over under the trees and have a look. as we emerged from the trees on cemetery ridge there was the battlefield laid out before us with its many memorials/monuments. i didn't think that what i'd seen and heard in pictures inside (it was one of the first wars to be photographed) was there preserved just outside the door. guide books now out it was a short walk to the 'angle' a corner in the wall ahead of us. it was at the angle and the point known as 'the high water mark' in a copse of trees that the confederate forces charge across the open ground between the combatants on 3 july reached its closest point to breaching the union line. in advance of the confederate charge (known as pickett's charge) on 3 july there had been a pounding of the union line by the rebel batteries on seminary ridge some 3/4 mile away. to save ammunition the union batteries did not return fire to any great extent. in fact many of the union howitzers did not open fire until the confederate line was just yards away. whole companies were blown away in seconds. we went on to see the peach orchard, the wheatfield, and devils den, relatively small areas were thousands fell. standing on little round top you could see how the union's retreat from the position exposed the union line until it was plugged at the last minute just in time by a small force of union soldiers fighting against the odds. the whole landscape was not much changed in 150 years.

in later visits to that part of the US we visited fredericksburg, chancellorsville, and the wilderness.

the only flag flown at these places is the stars and stripes, however, you do see the battle flag of the army of north virginia but here it's carefully set in its proper historical context.

So Barry Obama objects to the flag (he changed his name to Barrak to appeal to the middle class) and the flag has racist and supremacist overtones, should that mean it should be banned from ever being seen? I honestly do not know the answer to that, I personally have no objection to it, just like I have no objection to the Union Flag. But, I am English and to me my Nations Flag is the English Flag of St George; who was probably Italian and slew a dragon… I digress…

i have no desire to see anything placed in proper historical context being banned.

however, you cannot ignore the sensitivities of the battle flag being used by racists and white supremacists.

(similarly i've no desire to see the fylfot being banned provided it's in keeping with its historical and religious context and not as the symbol of nazism; however, one needs to be aware of sensitivities whatever the context.)

We have become a society that takes the slightest insult from any source and however intended, recently the MP Pat Gleeson apologised for calling a racist a racist. The world has gone PC mental afraid that someone somewhere may just take offence and if they do apologies are demanded. It’s time we all toughened up a bit, took things not so literally and accept the fact that sometimes people do and say things that are not intended to cause offence and shouldn’t be taken that way.

it is a delicate balancing act.

I once worked for an Austrian company I introduced the global head of my division to ‘Allo ‘Allo I explained that it was British humour, she watched it and thought it funny. The biggest laugh was every time we met her after that she would always say “I vwas just pissing by and vwant a café” in an outrageous mock French accent, at the start of her presentations it would be “listen very carefully I shall say this only once”, and after a few drinks she would insist on calling me Rene.

set in the correct context - it lampoons the brits more than anything and was a parody of the successful tv series 'secret army' - it is light-hearted mocking of ourselves. that doesn't mean one can simply ignore sensitivities but few were reported. it was as you say, british humour.

british humour though can be easily misinterpreted and seen as offensive: the top gear in alabama programme, for example.

Perhaps we should spend less time finding things to be insulted about and spend more time finding the funny side of life

of course we should!

from what i've seen, this cub camp had a wild west theme. (another side of US culture we get from TV and spaghetti westerns rather than reality!) i suspect someone decided to use any 'american flags' they could lay their hands on. i suspect those flying the battle flag of the ANV know little of its history or its resurgence and adoption by dixiecrats and kkk to further their obnoxious political aims.

as khoomei says it was likely to be a case of thoughtless poor judgement.

Wow, this has become very interesting and , I am not hijacking Tony's thread here, opens up some questions about our attitudes to others and how our actions might be seen by others.

So, we would not , I hope, tolerate racism or sectarianism in our groups because this is something that directly impacts upon our real time society. We would not , I hope, sing Orange songs - though from my youth many of them were eminently singable - but patently deeply bigoted and sectarian - I doubt that many outside Northern Ireland or parts of Scotland have ever heard most of them and would be truly shocked by their content being sung by those who purport to be religious.

We would not refer to Pakis, or Chinks or such in a way that was derogatory or offensive. These things we are in contact with daily and the idea of causing offence never enters our heads - I hope.

When talking to those from our ex-colonies, we do not treat them with any disregard, we do not, again, I hope, flaunt the Empire in their faces - that would be rude, insensitive and frankly obnoxious*. They might raise the subject, and I have generally found that there is just a little resentment, at least, but an acceptance that what was is what was. In terms of slavery, countries ( artificially created by the Imperialists) such as Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mauritania etc, all took part willingly in slavery, with or without European intervention, but for that we have become the whipping boys (no pun intended). The point is, that we do not cause them offence deliberately.

However, those issues with which we have no contact with, such as, say aboriginal matters in Australia, or the Americas ( aborignal in its wider term of indigenous peoples) we have no such contact, so we feel happy to misappropriate their culture and use it for our amusement - cowboys and indians at camp are a common theme, yet to many Native Americans much of what we do at such camps is truly offensive. A scan of news storied on the Washington Redskins and Native Americans gives an idea of how offensive they find it. Other teams and businesses that have misappropriated Native American names and titles have also seen campaigns launched to make them rethink. ( When we added Hoka Hey to our Navigator logo, we explained its use, and asked a Sioux representative if there would be any offence caused, we were told that it was nice that we asked and , no they had no trouble with our use of their language - Essentially, it means - Let's Do It).

The Confederate flag has long been used in Europe as a sign of anyone rebelling against anything, used without thought though by the thoughtless in the main - and that is the issue. It is thoughtless.

The reality of the US Civil War has been lost. It has become a North South thing, which it essentially was - though Virginia is actually quite northerly - it has become about the emancipation of slaves. The reality was it was about commerce and taxes and slavery came somewhat down the list. The war started in 1861 - Lincoln only gave slaves their freedom in 1863 - so it was never a priority for the North, had they not needed to create a change in the balance of the conflict Lincoln would have delayed the emancipation longer than he did. If it had been about the emancipation of slaves, he would have declared in 1861.

So the Confederate Battle Flag has been misappropriated by some and its significance, whatever it might have been, has been lost to those who are distanced from the reality of it. It almost falls into the realms of the issue of cowboys and indians at camp. It gets used with little consideration for the reality and the offence that comes with its use.

So, we as Scouts, or Navigators, or whatever, need to follow our law and promise, our moral compass and consider others in all that we do. In this scenario of using the confederate battle flag, we should be thinking, what does this mean? Is this correct?

As Walsall Wizard has said, should we also stop using the Union Flag? Well, there may well be places where it would be inappropriate to fly national flags unless in a spirit of reconciliation or unity or respect - and we see that all the time when one country's ministers or representatives officially visit another - The Russian Flag and the US flag often fly side by side.

The whole point is that we should all be thoughtful about what we do and how we represent others. No-one would run a "slavery camp" and have half the group blacked up, and the other run around in traders' dress, whip in hand. So, why is it okay to mock the native american, for example? (And we often do).

Now, there is a verse in "Johnny Comes Down from Hilo", in which the original has been changed from "A big buck N***** with his sea boot on",, to something along the lines of "An Arkansas farmer with his seaboots on" (or similar, which makes a nonsense of the rest of the song. BUT, few will sing that original line for the offense that it would cause...

We need to think of others, perhaps just a little more often than we do. (End of sermon).

* Though I have met several Indian and Malaysian businessmen who say that the best thing that happened to their country was the British Empire, because it gave them a single language for business and prepared them for commerce in a modern world - none would have us back though

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Native American symbolism is heavily used by the Boy Scouts of America. I believe largely because of the early influence of Ernest Thompson Seton, who was a British writer and naturalist, and one of the founders of the BSA. I am not sure how Native Americans view a largely white middle class organisation appropriating their language, dances, etc. I guess attitudes cover the full range of full approval to disgust.

The reality of the US Civil War has been lost. It has become a North South thing, which it essentially was - though Virginia is actually quite northerly - it has become about the emancipation of slaves. The reality was it was about commerce and taxes and slavery came somewhat down the list. The war started in 1861 - Lincoln only gave slaves their freedom in 1863 - so it was never a priority for the North, had they not needed to create a change in the balance of the conflict Lincoln would have delayed the emancipation longer than he did. If it had been about the emancipation of slaves, he would have declared in 1861.

while abolition of slavery was not the sole factor in the north and south going to war, it was one of those considered to be key to the causes of the conflict.

the american civil war started because of irreconcilable differences between those that were free states and those that were slave states over the power of the federal government to ban slavery in those territories that had not yet become states. until the 13th amendment to the constitution (in 1865) banning slavery the issue was divisive.

up to the war the number of free and slave states was equal. this maintained the balance of power in the senate where each state had two senators. however, the population of the free states was increasing rapidly as industrialisation and the economy grew. the agricultural south remained a backwater as far as economic growth was concerned with a high dependency on cotton. the free states gained the upper hand in the house of representatives. fearing a constitutional takeover by the free states the slave states saw that it was important for them to hold an effective veto by maintaining the same number of senators as free states.

when missouri territory entered as a slave state, maine was added as a free state. california entered the union just before the war and sent two senators, one free and one slave supporting. however, when minnesota and oregon entered as free states and trouble broke out in kansas over its entry as a free state, the balance was upset and war became inevitable.

the issue of slavery was a cause of secession. secession was the cause of the war.

Somewhere I still have a booklet about wide games, produced by the Scout Association of Ireland (as was) which recommended not using contemporary themes for wide games. It was shortly before I read this that ran I a wide game featuring the IRA. This was at the height of The Troubles. I’ve since come round to the view that this was a mistake.

Since then I’ve tended to stick to historical themes for wide games, such as Jacobites and Hanoverians (I think I once managed to reverse the outcome of the battle of Culloden) and Prohibition in 1920s Chicago.

Singing the Dambusters verse from I Am The Music Man at a campfire, somehow forgetting there were German Scouts present, was also a mistake.

Native American symbolism is heavily used by the Boy Scouts of America. I believe largely because of the early influence of Ernest Thompson Seton, who was a British writer and naturalist, and one of the founders of the BSA. I am not sure how Native Americans view a largely white middle class organisation appropriating their language, dances, etc. I guess attitudes cover the full range of full approval to disgust.

I follow a number of Native American news feeds and FB Pages, and they appear to have no truck with BSA. There is a very strong feeling against misappropriation. It is incredible how the Native Americans who opt to stay on the reservations can be treated by their neighbours, but I guess that is a discussion for another time and another place.

I follow a number of Native American news feeds and FB Pages, and they appear to have no truck with BSA. There is a very strong feeling against misappropriation. It is incredible how the Native Americans who opt to stay on the reservations can be treated by their neighbours, but I guess that is a discussion for another time and another place.

When we were hosted by a troop in Denver they had two native american leaders, one of whom was very into the full religious and cultural history and told many stories and demonstrated the pipe of peace - actually very interesting. They seemed fine with it tbh.

Singing the Dambusters verse from I Am The Music Man at a campfire, somehow forgetting there were German Scouts present, was also a mistake.

Really? My experience of Germans these days, particularly younger ones, is that there is no kind of grudge at all over that kind of thing - we are after all now allies. They'd most probably sing along.